In the early 1970s San Diego was a sleepy Southern California Navy town on the Mexican border and a seemingly unlikely gathering point for some of the most innovative, unclassifiable American artists of their era. Yet the presence of Harry Partch – hobo composer, iconoclast and inventor of instruments such as the Harmonic Canon and Quadrangularis Reversum – and a newly established and highly experimental music department at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) ushered in a revolution that was as much social as it was musical. Drawing from the occult, self-realization and radical political movements of 70s Southern California, these artists sought to dismantle the established control systems of American life, looking to the future even as they sometimes referenced a distant…
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Dream Theater celebrate their 40th anniversary with a special live release Quarantième filmed during their 2024 European tour, their first to feature Mike Portnoy back in the band after over 13 years.
Recorded in Paris at the Adidas Arena, the tour saw the band debuting a track from their latest studio album ‘Parasomnia’, as well as classic tracks from throughout their career, including ‘Metropolis Pt. 1’, ‘Hollow Years’, ‘Octavarium’, ‘Pull Me Under’…
“From the moment we announced our 40th anniversary tour, we knew it would be a very special event for both the band and our fans and must be captured. With this release, our performance in Paris is presented so beautifully in both stunning audio and video and really encapsulates this momentous occasion for all to enjoy”…
The band members’ musical history prior to the band’s formation and the blues numbers they covered are all on this one disc! Little Feat was one of the most important bands that led the American rock scene in the 70’s with their unique sound that digested and absorbed various kinds of roots music. This CD is a collection of the blues numbers they covered on their albums and live shows, as well as the recordings they left before Little Feat was formed, which were also full of great players. Many people associate Little Feat with Lowell George’s slide guitar and the groovy rock sound of New Orleans funky music such as Alan Toussaint and the Meaters. Starting with the opening number from the famous live album “Waiting For Columbus”, an original song that…
The music heard on Kara-Lis Coverdale‘s album Changes in Air originated from an installation at a floating sauna in Oslo called Skarven. The pieces are inspired by five materials (wood, water, sun, glass, and metal) and were originally composed and recorded in 2019, then finished in 2025, when the album was released.
While From Where You Came, the first of Coverdale’s three 2025 LPs, was an expansive, collaborative work, and A Series of Actions in a Sphere of Forever was a series of solo piano nocturnes, Changes in Air is somewhere in between. It was composed and played by Coverdale alone, using electronic organ, modular synthesis, and piano, and it contains longer pieces which flow into each other, subtly evolving.
Finnish composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Jimi Tenor celebrated his 60th birthday in 2025 by touring and releasing three albums. In March, he released Sinus Amoris in collaboration with Freestyle Man, July Blue Skies appeared in April with Finn soul kings Cold Diamond & Mink, and Selenites, Selenites! arrived in November as the debut album by the Jimi Tenor Band. The latter was recorded at two studios: Electric Avenue in Hamburg with producer Tobias Levin, and at Kiikala Center of the Universe Studio Complex in Finland (a remote house) with producer/guitarist Lauri Kallio. These eight songs have various styles but are guided by optimism as an aesthetic. Selenite is a soft, translucent variety of the mineral gypsum, named after the Greek moon…
SAD is Ikonika‘s first Hyperdub full-length in eight years, though the artist did release EPs and digital albums in between. As with other Ikonika albums, SAD draws from a different set of influences than the producer’s other albums, and it also reflects changes in their personal life.
They came out as queer and trans, were diagnosed with autism, and also became a parent; a young child’s voice playfully sings along at the end of “WHATCHUREALLYWANT.” Through queer community, Ikonika became more interested in African dance music styles such as amapiano, gqom, and bacardi, while also revisiting music from their Egyptian heritage. Perhaps the biggest update to Ikonika’s sound, however, is the addition of vocals, and more of a focus…
Omar Sosa’s Sendas — “paths,” as it translates — pursues courses of catharsis. A solo piano session recorded live at Fazioli Concert Hall in northern Italy during a period of global uncertainty just a few short years ago, it offers a series of improvisations that speak to reflective resolve.
The music draws on both individual perspective and universal positioning, creating an overlay that binds artist and listener through the act of creation, a yearning for understanding, and the ceaseless movement of time.
“Estancia” sets the album in patient motion, with an invitation to stay within Sosa’s warm cocoon. “Heartwarming Night” delves into electro-acoustic ambience, with a gentle cicada chirp, atmospheric enhancements, late-arriving vocal…
…a remixed and remastered version, with new parts recorded, including by Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett and strings recorded at the iconic Abbey Road Studios in London.
Tackling a legendary progressive rock concept album is a dangerous proposition, especially when a recent remaster has refocused the spotlight on the original. But drummer/vocalist Nick D’Virgilio is better suited than most to reinterpret Genesis’ classis The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1975). A member of contemporary progsters Spock’s Beard, perhaps more importantly D’Virgilio played drums on four tracks of Genesis’ overlooked post-Phil Collins album, Calling All Stations (1997). With such a connection, and in collaboration with Nashville producer Mark Hornsby — who…
The rise of Tobias Jesso Jr. feels vintage, the stuff of American dreams. Born in Canada, Jesso tried to make it in L.A. in the early 2010s, writing songs for others and playing bass; just when he gave up, a series of buzzy singles, released under his own name, caught the attention of a previously impenetrable industry. He made his 2015 full-length debut, Goon, in a bleary, nostalgic Laurel Canyon mode, brooding over personal hardships and slotting himself into a long lineage of L.A. singer-songwriters. Jesso’s chronicles of dashed dreams served as his own last-ditch audition; he immediately became a coveted collaborator, writing for everyone from Harry Styles to FKA twigs and nabbing the inaugural Grammy for Songwriter of the Year in 2023.
Remastered from the original source tapes for the first time, this edition includes the original album, bonus tracks, home and studio demos (from 1978-1980), and early live tracks.
The Durutti Column’s debut album does not have an auspicious origin story. The band whose name it bore had split acrimoniously just before they were supposed to record it. Their guitarist Vini Reilly was so poleaxed by depression that he was virtually unable to leave his house: 12 different attempts were made to section him over the course of 1979. Believing that Reilly was “going to die”, Factory Records boss Tony Wilson intervened, buying him a new guitar, then suggested he visit a studio with the label’s troubled but visionary producer Martin Hannett as “an experiment”.
Formed in 1987 by Fruitbat and Jim Bob, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine burst onto the scene with their signature style of punk-pop infused with samples, drum machines, and social commentary.
Released in 1995, Worry Bomb was Carter USM’s fifth album and their fourth in a row to break into the top ten of the UK album charts. It would also be the first to feature their new drummer, Wez, marking a shift away from the famous drum machine sound.
The album mixed things up musically, balancing mellow acoustic tracks like ‘My Defeatist Attitude’ with Carter’s signature high-energy indie rock, including ‘Let’s Get Tattoos’ and ‘The Young Offenders Mum’ which both hit the UK top 40.
To mark the 30th\u202Fanniversary…
Released exclusively for Record Store Day Black Friday 2025, Avon Calling! captures the band in full flight, raw and raucous at 1994’s Phoenix Festival. The set finds Carter firing through classics like ‘The Only Living Boy In New Cross’ and ‘Sheriff Fatman’, fresh cuts ‘Let’s Get Tattoos’ and ‘The Young Offender’s Mum’, alongside a cover of Buzzcocks’ ‘Everybody’s Happy Nowadays’.
Equally revered and despised in their native England, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine has been on the cutting edge of the U.K.’s dance-pop scene since their first hit single in 1989. Instead of following the disco-derived pop songs of the Pet Shop Boys, Carter relies more on the underground club/dance scene, bringing such techniques as spoken word samples, drum and riff samples…
47Soul’s Shamstep EP ignited their Electro-Arabic Dabke revolution in 2015. Now it returns with remixes from some of the Arab world’s most forward-thinking producers-Molotof, Toumba, and Hello Psychaleppo-bridging past and future.
47Soul single-handedly sowed the seeds of the Shamstep genre. The Palestinian musical collective formed in Jordan in 2013 with Tareq Abu Kwaik, Ramzy Suleiman, Walaa Sbait and Hamza Arnaout taking influence from hip-hop, electronica, and R&B and melding it with the sounds of Dabke, a traditional folk dance, and other Shaa’bi roots music from the Levantine region.
Shamstep, their groundbreaking debut EP released in 2015, not only helped coin the genre’s name but also brought a new audience…
Essentially the forerunners to Badfinger, the Iveys landed on the Beatles’ Apple label in mid-1968 after the latter group’s personal assistant, Mal Evans, encouraged them to submit tapes to Paul McCartney. Their bright, melodic, and harmony-filled pop/rock sound immediately drew comparisons to the Beatles and to the work of McCartney in particular.
The group’s roots go back to Swansea, Wales, where they’d first gotten together in 1963 under the name the Wild Ones, with Pete Ham on vocals and lead guitar, David “Dai” Jenkins on rhythm guitar and vocals, Ron Griffiths on bass and vocals, and Terry Gleeson on drums. They became the Iveys – picked for a street in Swansea, as well as an expression of admiration for the Hollies…
…a newly remastered edition, expanded with two brand-new compositions reimagined from the original audio files: ‘Claustrophobia’, reworked by Carter, and ‘Uncaged’, reworked by Boddy.
In 2000, Ian Boddy founded the DiN label “to (purvey) fine contemporary electronica.” He is also the label’s chief artist.
Caged is a collaboration between Boddy and Throbbing Gristle’s Chris Carter. It is a dense mix of sequenced e-music, heavy rhythms, and vast atmospheres. One of Boddy’s strengths has always been his willingness to try something different and to learn new methods, techniques, and sounds. He allows Carter’s dense atmospheres to augment the overt Berlin school sound.
So, while this definitely has all the characteristics…
Drummer and Nea Jazz Master Billy Hart releases first live album, Multidirectional, with his longtime all-star quartet featuring saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Ethan Iverson, and bassist Ben Street.
Legendary drummer Billy Hart credits the great Rashied Ali for introducing him to the term “multidirectional” – a descriptor for the elusive, daring approach to the kit that Hart and others of his generation had developed intuitively in response to the increasing freedom and exploration of the era’s jazz experimentation.
“Rashied Ali told me that ‘multidirectional’ was what John Coltrane called this freeform feel, where conventional structure was abandoned and the rhythms could cut in any direction,” he writes in Oceans of Time: The Musical Autobiography…
An expanded deluxe edition of A Tab in the Ocean by Nektar. First issued in November 1972, the album was the second release by Nektar and was a milestone for the band as it set the template that that would bring them success in both Germany and the USA.
Originally featuring just four pieces, the albums first side would be dominated by the extensive title track which was a progressive rock tour de force. The remaining tracks, ‘Desolation Valley / Waves’, ‘Crying in the Dark’ and ‘King of Twilight’ would also become Nektar classics.
The album was recorded and mixed at Dierks Studios, Stommeln, Germany in October 1972, produced by Peter Hauke and Nektar and engineered by Dieter Dierks.
Coming off the less-than-classic Shake It Up, the Cars decided again to change things up, this time moving from their home studio in Boston to London to record with Mutt Lange. The producer was coming off a string of sleek modern hits, most recently Def Leppard’s Pyromania, and the Cars put themselves in Lange’s capable and demanding hands. They spent six months in the studio painstakingly putting the album together, sometimes spending days getting the right bass sound or vocal take. The bandmembers were rarely in the room at the same time and instead of using live drums on the record, Lange and David Robinson put together drum tracks using samples of Robinson’s playing. This sounds a bit like the recipe for a airless, stale album,…